December 7 - THE MARTIAN by Ridley Scott (USA, UK) @Cinestar Andel (Prague, Czech Republic), 21:00
Christmas season means that Prague's vivid cinema scene will inevitably be commercialised for a couple of weeks to attend to its audience's festive inclinations. Bad for me, because it means that for the next while, I will be stuck watching mainstream films for the next while, especially due to my inability to attend the vast majority of world cinema screenings because I don't speak Czech and most are not English friendly.
THE MARTIAN was not original my first pick for today, as I wanted t attend a CHARLES CHAPLIN retrospective at PONREPO. But my friend KAMIL was celebrating his birthday, so I decided to invite him to the flicks. I asked him what he wanted to see and without battering an eye, he replied STAR WARS. I then asked him again, specifying that it had to be a film that was out, and he said that he had pretty much seen all he wanted to see except for THE MARTIAN.
I kind of wanted to see it too, and had missed its original run, so we caught a nine o'clock screening. Unfortunately, it was at an multiplex, CINESTAR ANDEL, which is always a shockingly bad experience. First of all, the tickets were severely overpriced. Second of all, before the film actually started, we had to endure well over twenty minutes of commercials and trailers, which almost drove me bonkers. To make matters worse, the couple sitting beside us talks the whole time. And I don't mean whisper. I mean, actual conversation type of talking. I don't speak Czech, but I doubt it was even related to the film itself. This drives me crazy. I kept trying to get their attention, and I could see that the people sitting in front of them was getting a bit restless as well. No one said anything, and I kind of avoided having to be the one to tell them to shut up because, well, I didn't want to be the non-Czech speaking guy to rain on the lovebird's parade. Besides, if it hadn't been for their conversation, I would have been distracted by the constant rattling of candy wrappers and popcorn bags anyways.
The collective cinematic experience reaches a low point when attending a multiplex screening, even when watching an entertaining, scientifically sensitive but also often genuinely funny film like THE MARTIAN. People shouldn't be surprised to find that there is a lack of interest in cinema going, given the fact that this is the only type of cinematic experience the vast majority of the global population actually knows about.